BLONDIE’S CHRIS STEIN ON GUN CLUB

Debbie and I met Jeff in the late Seventies somewhere in Los Angeles. He was a big Blondie fan and a very moody kid… within a few years of meeting him he started working on his own music. At first I was just pleased that he had an outlet but when I started to hear what he was working on I was genuinely impressed at how sophisticated the stuff was.

I guess another few years passed and by then Jeff had established himself and The Gun Club in the growing world of new music. Then in the early Eighties Jeff and I talked about my producing a recording with the Gun Club – when did we do the thing? ’81-’82 somewhere in there. Over the years I have seen comments by surviving Gun Club members to the effect that the album wasn’t raw enough, too clean, etc. I am genuinely sorry that any of these guys feel misrepresented but… Jeff and I talked at length about the quality and style of the record and I really feel that we were faithful to his vision. I know for certain that he wasn’t interested in making a punk style recording, that he wanted to mix genres, and that was where part of the genius derives from; his pulling in elements of Tex-Mex, Country, Punk, etc., etc… (besides that, while we were working I really don’t recall anyone saying anything about the texture of the guitars, etc. and that would have been the time to speak up not more than twenty five years later…) Memory is objective and hindsight is as they say crystal clear. I was just looking at record reviews on Amazon.com, just ones put there by average people who bought the record and I was really pleased to see all of the positive comments; ‘haunting’ is a word that kept reappearing; I think that Jeff would have been pleased as well.

One evening in Amsterdam, Blondie was playing the Paradiso. I don’t remember for sure if it was before or after we did Miami, probably after. Sometime during the proceedings, like after our sound check, there arrived Jeffrey, and he was an impressive presence: he was followed by a camera and sound crew, was wearing a tough leather trench coat, looked like maybe George Raft had he been a rock star, his demeanour was very understated and intense… I have always loved that particular moment because even then it told me that he had ‘arrived’, at some place that he was looking towards; he was respected and idolized and was in charge… that’s a memory that may be distorted over time but one I like to hold on to when I think about Jeff… those thoughts of him are frequent…

Chris SteinBlondie guitarist and producer of Gun Club Records Miami and Death Party for Animal Records

To say The Gun Club’s musical journey was a roller coaster ride would be an understatement! The Gun Club were a true fire of love and hate and power and force and good old fashioned Rock’n’Roll. Preaching and screaming da Blues!

Jeffrey Lee Pierce went to that there crossroads and stuck two fingers up at the Devil and told him he was going to do it his way and take the highway and follow his path, his vision and his relentless goal.

No prisoners were taken and many fell by the wayside. In the end what remains is a legacy of a man’s vision and quest to either create or destroy the very music that he made.

Hero, Villain, Joker, Anarchist, Misunderstood, plum loco or just down right crazy? Who really knew the real Jeffrey Lee Pierce? This box set is a tribute, a way of preaching The Gun Club’s Blues, a way of saying ‘hey screw you, all this was the real deal and if you missed it… you missed it!’ And, boy oh, boy, did you miss something special.

From the many different line up changes featured in this audio document of studio and live recordings it is easy to hear the different styles of music through the short time The Gun Club were around. Their chemistry produced a wonderful selection of music: from the early rumblings of punk blues created on the wonderful and highly acclaimed first album Fire Of Love (originally released on Slash Records’ subsidiary label Ruby), through to the mid-period white noise Stooges-esque thunder of the glorious Death Party E.P. recorded on Chris Stein’s Animal Records label, rolling on to the evolving brilliance of The Las Vegas Story right up to the comeback album Mother Juno LP produced by Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie and culminating in some wholesome traditional blues on Jeffrey’s second solo record Ramblin with Jeffrey Lee.

The Gun Club originally took form in 1979/80 as Creeping Ritual (a lurid moniker later used by Jeffrey as a calling card for The Gun Club’s publishing company). It is well documented that Jeffrey was originally a writer for the long-defunct L.A. music paper Slash magazine which later evolved into Slash Records.

Writing aside, Jeffrey was no stranger to performing and had been in various bands such as Phast Phreddie’s Precisions and groups of his own called the E Types and Red Lights, early pop outfits apparently inspired by Blondie whom Jeffrey had met in Los Angeles and for whom he ran an early fan club.

To understand The Gun Club phenomenon it’s important to understand from whence Jeffrey and the band drew inspiration. Blues legends such as Skip James, Howlin’ Wolf, Blind Willie McTell through to later bands and artists such as Creedance Clearwater Revival, Dylan, Marc Bolan, Jim Morrison, The Stooges and Debbie Harry all played a part in helping steer the band’s musical direction.

Jeffrey also had a love of Reggae music and had ventured to Jamaica on one occasion to hang out. Indeed many of his Reggae record reviews were finished off with the signature…Ranking Jeffrey Lee. Writing for Slash also opened the door to recording when Jeffrey left a cassette tape of Gun Club demos on constant play in the Slash office cassette machine, leading to the band’s first release on Ruby Records.

Late 1979 saw Creeping Ritual play live shows featuring the early guitar work of Jeffrey’s best friend Brian Tristan aka Kid Congo Powers. Brian would shortly defect to The Cramps, whose guitarist Brian Gregory had just left, creating an opening for their new musical fuzz/Garage direction. However, this did not happen until Creeping Ritual had played a few shows and had been re-named by Keith Morris of the Circle Jerks as The Gun Club.

CD 2 Shake Me Up Some Punk Blues of this box set features live performances by this early line up of Jeffrey Lee on vocals, Brian Tristan on guitar, Terry Graham on drums and Rob Ritter on bass.

Or do these recordings in fact feature the original Creeping Ritual band members Don Snowden and Brad Dunning who made up the original rhythm section in those early days? It’s unlikely, as the recordings featured on the band’s ABC Records release Birth, Death and The Ghost came from the collection of Terry Graham.

The newly re-Christened Gun Club promptly attempted to destroy the music with live shows featuring Jeffrey Lee as a demented preacher man taking a bible on stage and throwing it to the floor only to then jump up and down on it to get a greater reaction from the crowd!

Most clubs just did not get it but to understand The Gun Club you have to appreciate the love/hate relationship between the band members and the music they wanted to play and destroy at the same time! Arguably it’s this volatile chemistry that provided the explosive energy for making The Gun Club breathe their fire!

Or to put it another way: Out of chaos and da blues came genius!

Another contradiction is the band’s apparent hatred of Rockabilly music but here you have a band taking the classic Rock’n’Roll song ‘Fire Of Love’ by Jody Reynolds and turning it into their own, even managing to go one better on the MC5’s cover version of said same song!

For many the classic line up is deemed to be Jeffrey Lee, Terry Graham, Ward Dotson and Rob Ritter, the line up that was to go on to record the band’s first full-length LP Fire Of Love, a punk blues behemoth featuring such classics as ‘Ghost On the Highway’ and ‘She’s Like Heroin To Me’ – a love song to end all love songs.

Terry Graham and Rob Ritter came from legendary L.A. Punk band The Bags while Ward Dotson had done stints in bands such as Der Stab and Sexually Frustrated. Another Bags band member would later join The Gun Club. Patricia Morrison featured on bass guitar and would later go onto play bass in Fur Bible (formed following the break up of The Gun Club in December 1984), The Sisters Of Mercy and later The Damned, as well as releasing one solo album.

Go Tell The Mountain (CD1) can to all intents and purposes be viewed as a long overdue ‘Best Of’ featuring classic cuts from The Gun Club as well as songs from Jeffrey Lee’s two solo records Wildweed and Ramblin Jeffrey Lee.

Once asked what his future plans were back in 1982 Jeffrey replied “No Future man. I’ve never been so bored in my whole life. I’ll go anywhere anyone wants to take us and do anything. To be a piece of dust and just float. I’ve got the Bo Diddley attitude of hey, let’s make some records, there’s nothing else to do. I’ll blindly trudge on. I don’t care if we make it or not. I just want to have some fun for a while”.

Following The Gun Club’s first record, Chris Stein of Blondie was given his own label by Chrysalis Records called Animal Records to which The Gun Club would find themselves signed for their second studio LP Miami. Recorded in New York with a very tight budget, it was during these sessions Rob Ritter decided he’d had enough and wanted to quit the band.

Rob left and formed 45 Grave with whom he played bass for many years until his death from a heroin overdose in 1991. Rob was replaced by Patricia Morrison and she was to stay until The Gun Club’s disbanding which would see Jeffrey Lee Pierce start his solo career, spawning the Wildweed solo record.

October 1982 saw the new Gun Club undertake their first major European tour with the new line up of Jeffrey Lee, Terry Graham, Ward Dotson and Patricia Morrison. This was to be a short-lived line up and, depending on who you believe, both Ward Dotson and Terry Graham decided to leave or Jeffrey Lee had them replaced.

Jeffrey Lee called on new friend Jim Duckworth of Panther Burns fame after the bands crossed paths whilst on tours in the U.S. Christmas 1982 saw Jeffrey and Jim spend time together drinking and talking about making music together within The Gun Club set up, as Jeffrey once again found himself in New York with soon-to-be new member and drummer Dee Pop of the Bush Tetras.

In January of 1983 Jim was asked to fly to Manhattan to record the next Gun Club venture on vinyl which was The Death Party E.P. once again for Animal Records. Patricia Morrison did not feature on the recording but was later to re-join and this line up would go on to tour before further band departures occurred.

Both CD 2 Shake Me Up Some Punk Blues and CD 3 Some Killing Floor Blues feature a healthy dose of this Gun Club white noise experience. A band full of sex drugs and Rock’n’Roll!

After a gruelling European tour, burnt out and without any money for their efforts Dee Pop was long gone like a turkey in the corn! Terry Graham re-joined the band for a handful of American dates.

However Terry Graham’s return to the drum kit was again short-lived. Prior to a tour of Australia both he and Jim Duckworth decided to quit as the thought of no money again to show for their efforts was a bridge too far.

Jeffrey Lee jetted out to Australia alone and performed the first planned Gun Club show solo. Tracks 18 and 19 on the close of CD2 feature two rare recordings of the yet to be recorded track ‘Moonlight Motel’ and ‘Mother Earth’ from the LP Miami.

Jeffrey put a band together while out in the land down under and Patricia Morrison flew out for the tour dates along with old friend and original Gun Club guitarist Kid Congo Powers, following his departure from The Cramps. Johnny and Spencer from Australian band The Johnny’s were drafted in to complete this Oz-only line up of The Gun Club.

On the band’s return to the L.A. Terry Graham would once more be drafted in to sit behind the drum kit (the only thing having stopped him from going to Australia besides the money was a possible visa problem). This line up – Jeffrey Lee Pierce on vocals, guitar, trumpet (a brief dalliance as the instrument was mysteriously lost in the Las Vegas desert on route to more U.S. tour dates), Pat Bag Morrison on bass, Kid Congo Powers on lead guitar and Terry Graham on drums – was to record the last Gun Club album The Las Vegas Story for Animal Records in March /April 1984 prior to the 1984 split and disbanding. The record was produced by Jeff Eyrich.

A U.S. and European tour followed which saw Terry Graham depart the band once and for all with girlfriend Amy in Paris. Terry had been filming all the shows and backstage antics for a future video release but unfortunately the tour bus was broken into in and all the tapes and cameras were stolen. One filmed show apparently saw Brian Gregory, the first guitarist in the Cramps, and Ike Knox who later replaced Kid Congo in the Cramps for some London shows, jump on stage for an encore of Bo Diddley’s ‘Gunslinger’.

Sadly, to date these tapes and all the rest have never surfaced and this may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back for Terry who upped and danced his way out of town mid tour, landing on my doorstep for a week prior to flying back to LA and out of the music business! A cat called Desperate was drafted in for the remainder of the tour to play drums and his handy work can be found on the last two tracks on CD3 Some Killing Floor Blues.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was it: the last salute……the gunfight at the OK Corral. Jeffrey and the band decided to do two shows at Dingwalls in Camden Lock in the weeks leading up to Christmas 1984. Australian band The Scientists fronted by Kim Salmon supported the two very packed, sold out shows. The guns were loaded and the shows were a blast. Full force and both barrels delivered by a band about to explode.

Following a short trip to Egypt, a solo Jeffrey Lee quickly recorded a new album for Static records in the UK. Inspired by his trip and a feeling of being free of L.A., a now London-based Jeffrey Lee produced his first solo album Wildweed.

The next two years continued to be a solo effort with Jeffrey pooling in various musicians from the London scene, members of bands like The Cure, Spear Of Destiny and Killing Joke helping out. A follow-up 12-inch EP Flamingos featured two classic cover versions of Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Fire’ and U.S. noise terrorists Flipper’s ‘Get Away‘.

A solo tour was to follow by which time Jeffrey had met a young Japanese lady Romi Mori who would become both girlfriend and guitar/bass player in the next incarnation of The Gun Club. Nick Sanderson would also make his first appearance on drums. The Jeffrey Lee Quartet hit venues in Europe to push the solo records.

London 1985 was a happening place with a thriving music scene throwing up various styles of music from the hard rock antics of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, The Cult, Lords Of The New Church, and Zodiac Mindwarp & The Love Reaction through to the psychedelic monstrosity of Dr & The Medics and Voodoo Child! Clubs like The Bat Cave, Gossips and The Embassy were the place to see and be seen. The Ramones were also in town for what was to be five sold out nights at the world famous London Lyceum, a venue The Gun Club had played on earlier occasions.

It was at one of these shows that Jeffrey was recognised and approached by Liz Frazer of the Cocteau Twins, a meeting that would eventually lead to the production of the classic 1987 Mother Juno album. The album was recorded in Berlin over six days in the Hansa studio where David Bowie had also recorded. Mother Juno featured the return of Kid Congo Powers following his stint as a Bad Seed for Nick Cave along with Romi on bass and Nick on drums. Nick would later go on to form Earl Brutus and sadly passed away recently. Following a triumphant return and a blistering live show at the Astoria in London which saw Jeffrey hanging from the venue’s velvet curtains spouting lines from David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, a further album Pastoral Hide And Seek followed.

1990-91 saw Jeffrey record his second solo album Ramblin Jeffrey Lee with Cypress Grove and Willie Love, a return to Blues music with cover versions of classic cuts from Son House (‘Pony Blues’),Skip James (‘Hardtime Killin’ Floor Blues’) as well as a few originals for good measure.

1993 saw the departure of Kid Congo Powers back to L.A. and the recording of Lucky Jim. By this time things had started to fall apart within Jeffrey’s personal life and in effect this meant the end of The Gun Club.

I’m not here to tell you the woes of Jeffrey Lee, the allegations of drink and drugs nor the relationship problems which may or may not have affected him.

What I will tell you is that I saw some of the highs and lows while working and being on tour with the band. We all have our demons and we are all affected by life in different ways.

One highlight was introducing The Gun Club on stage to 10,000 people while they supported a known English punk band at the Santa Monica Civic in L.A. (Patricia Morrison in a hacked up wedding dress and Chris D playing roadie). Another was seeing the Jeffrey Lee Pierce Quartet live at the Croydon Underground club in leafy Surrey, England.

I last saw Jeffrey for a drink in Kensington, London in late 1989. I met him that night at a rehearsal room in Hammersmith and he looked well. He was jamming with various musicians, working on getting a band back on the road. We took the tube to a pub (the Kensington Inn) close to where he was living.

My memories of Jeffrey are all good.

Jeffrey Lee Pierce died on 31st March 1996 from a blood clot on his brain in Utah, Colorado U.S.A.

I salute all the members of The Gun Club and I thank them for the music and the memories. If I could turn back time I’d do it all again… The Gun Club…best punk blues band EVER.

Mike MastrangeloPresident of the International Gun Club Fan Club 1981-1984